After Republican members of Congress were targeted by a left-wing zealot in a shooting in the Washington suburbs last week, lawmakers said they felt like sitting ducks and demanded more freedom to defend themselves while in the nation’s capital.

The chief target is the city’s restrictive gun laws, including its tight controls on concealed-carry permits, which require someone to show “good reason to fear injury” or another “proper reason,” such as a job that requires carrying large amounts of cash or valuables, before they can receive a permit.

One plan that has emerged would let anyone who holds a permit back home carry a concealed weapon in the District of Columbia as well. Another proposal in the works would specifically let members of Congress carry firearms anywhere in the country.

The push is on after about two dozen members of Congress and staffers were caught in the open on a baseball field in Alexandria last week by a gunman armed with a rifle and a handgun. If it hadn’t been for three U.S. Capitol Police officers assigned to protect one of the senior members at the field, those who were there would have been massacred, they said.

“We were sitting ducks. We had nothing to fight back with but bats, if it came to that,” Rep. Roger Williams of Texas, whose staffer was wounded in the shooting, said in the hours after the attack.

The shooter, James Hodgkinson, reportedly had a list of Republican lawmakers’ names and had repeatedly ranted against Republicans on social media. He was killed in a shootout with police after he injured a handful of people.

Rep. Thomas A. Garrett Jr., a Virginia Republican who introduced legislation in March that would wipe out many of the city’s firearms restrictions, said that if members could obtain concealed